The Secret Hour

by Luanne Rice

  “Why, Kate?”

  “To understand,” Kate said, choking on the word. “To figure it all out. Where she went; why she went. If only I had gotten that postcard sooner . . .”

  “I'm sorry,” he said, staring at his bare feet. “That was my fault. I couldn't bear to see your name on address labels back then. You'd started the divorce; I'd just throw the magazines into a basket; the postcard was among them. Must've gotten stuck, or caught in the pages.”

  “If only we'd seen it sooner . . .”

  “You think we could have stopped something?”

  Kate nodded, her eyes sweeping back to the portrait. Willa's fine eye was apparent in the pale color palette, the sure brushstrokes, the emotion in her subject's face, the soft yet bold white of the scarf.

  “What could we have stopped?”

  “I'm not sure,” Kate whispered.

  “I know you were afraid at first, when she was first missing,” Andrew said, his face twisted as if the words caused him shame. “That she wanted to hurt herself.”

  “For hurting me,” Kate said. “Yes . . . I was afraid she couldn't live with that.”

  “I can understand why you were afraid—the way you reacted, when you first saw us . . .” Andrew's hazel eyes flicked, involuntarily, toward the door to the hall leading to their bedroom.

  Kate's chest ached, remembering how she had come home early with a bad cold. She had opened the bedroom door, planning to hang her jacket up in the closet and then just collapse on the bed. Andrew and Willa were there—both naked, lying together, touching each other's faces in the most intimate way imaginable.

  First, Kate had been in shock.

  She had stared, disbelieving her eyes. Andrew and Willa . . . This couldn't be happening. She had felt the room spinning, heard herself cry out, and run out of the apartment.

  “She left here so fast,” Andrew said hollowly. “I doubt she could imagine facing you again. I couldn't . . . when you came back that night, went into the study to lie down.”

  “You came in to see me,” Kate said. “You got me a glass of cold water, put a cool washcloth in my hand . . .”

  “And you broke the glass against the wall, tore the washcloth into shreds.”

  “Willa didn't see that.”

  “No, she was long gone by then,” Andrew said. “And you left the next day. No second chance for me; for us. But we've been through that . . .”

  “What we'd had was broken.”

  “Maybe your sister thought you felt that for her, too. No second chance . . .”

  Kate stared at the portrait. What if he was right? Kate needed to believe she could put the pain behind her, return to loving her sister as much as before.

  “She's my sister,” Kate said. “We're bound by blood.”

  “We were bound by vows,” Andrew reminded her, his voice low. He stared out the window toward the Virginia side of the Potomac, a hard cast to his eyes.

  Kate's hands shook, unsure of what she was after. Maybe Andrew was right; if Willa had never left, Kate would never have learned how much she loved her. She might hate her sister still, unable to relinquish the hurt.

  “Did you think I could help you feel closer to her?” Andrew asked, sounding weary. “Is that why you came?”

  “I hoped you could,” Kate said, bowing her head.

  “Sorry . . .”

  “We all spent so much happy time here,” Kate said. “You were so generous to her; like a father, in many ways. She was so young when we got married.”

  “Look what I did to wreck it,” Andrew said, shaking his head bitterly.

  “Oh, Andrew,” Kate breathed. Watching him, seeing the toll it had all taken on him, she actually felt a little sorry for him. For the first time, she felt a wave of true forgiveness wash through her. To her surprise, she didn't hurt with quite the same intensity.

  “If you were hoping to find something else,” Andrew said, “look around. You don't get much mail here anymore, not even junk mail. And what does come, since the thing with the postcard, I look through pretty carefully.”

  “No,” Kate said, rising. “I just had to come . . . to see you. And talk about Willa. There's a lawyer in Connecticut . . .” She swallowed hard, thinking of John O'Rourke. “He represents a serial killer—Gregory Merrill. I went to see him because I think his client took Willa . . .”

  “What does the lawyer think?”

  Kate was silent, remembering the words John had spoken in Fairhaven, the way he had held and kissed her. She knew that if she told Andrew about the secret, he would know that John had broken his client's trust. . . .

  “I don't know,” Kate said, suddenly wishing she hadn't brought it up. Just speaking about John to Andrew seemed like a breach of something that she wanted to stay private. “It doesn't matter.”

  Andrew stared at her, as if waiting to see what she would do next. This must have been strange for him—just home from China, having a visit from the ex-wife he hadn't seen in months. She walked to the piano, leaned on the bench, and removed the portrait from the wall.

  “I hope you're happy,” she said.

  “Same to you,” he said.

  They stood still, in their old living room, staring into each other's eyes. Kate, unsure of why she had come, suddenly knew: to get Willa's portrait of her, to release Andrew forever.

  They gazed at each other for a long moment. Kate could almost feel Andrew wondering whether he should kiss her good-bye; she took a small step back, so he would know that he shouldn't.

  Then, nodding, she walked out the door. As she waited for the elevator, she heard it close softly behind her. She took a deep breath, amazed by the growing realization: She hadn't come here only to connect with Willa. She had come to say good-bye to Andrew. Her feelings for him belonged in the past.

  She thought of Connecticut. Of the dark blue Long Island Sound, of the golden river marshes. She thought of two children and a dog with briars in his fur. She thought of her sister, searching northward for the answers in her own soul. And she thought of a man, somehow connected to all of it—to all of the luminous and ordinary things that had come to matter most to Kate.

  chapter 18

  Teddy glanced out the window, worried about Maggie. There was too much danger in the world, and she was so small, pretty, and vulnerable. He had seen Amanda Martin's picture in the newspaper—the latest victim. She'd looked so nice and pretty—just like a girl he might see at school, or around town. A lot like Maggie. And if terrible things could happen to girls like Amanda, couldn't they also happen to Maggie?

  Now, checking his watch, he decided to give Maggie ten minutes before he went out looking for her. Ten minutes. It was three-oh-five; he'd give her till three-fifteen. His stomach rippled with anxiety. Usually she was home before he was—he'd walk in the front door, and there she would be, waiting and wanting to play or talk or tell him a joke.

  Lately, his life had kept him really busy, and he liked it that way. He didn't have to worry about Maggie when he was working out, which he found himself doing a lot—either before or after practice for the indoor league—wanting to make varsity next year.

  Besides, playing so much soccer and doing so much schoolwork kept him from getting really homesick. Gramps and Maeve were in the kitchen right now, baking pies, wanting to make everything nice for Thanksgiving. In spite of how much he preferred being at his grandfather's house, right now Teddy missed his own home. He checked his watch: three-oh-seven.

  It was Monday, and Thanksgiving was just four days away. He remembered how his mother would cook for the family, getting up really early to put the turkey in the oven. The house would smell so good. Everyone would go to the field, to watch the annual Shoreline-Riverside football game. Even the soccer fans would show up to cheer their schools on, and his mother would tease his soccer-loving father about how much bigger and stronger the football players were.

  Every set of push-ups, of free weights, Teddy did made him stronger. Made him better able to
protect his sister from all the harm out there in the world. Plus, his mother would be proud, if she could see him. She would think maybe the difference between football and soccer players wasn't so great after all.

  What was it like for the girls in their town, knowing that a new person was out there, wanting to hurt them? Teddy's stomach knotted up, thinking about it, thinking about Maggie: three-ten. While Gramps and Maeve were busy in the kitchen, Teddy wandered into the downstairs study.

  Gramps's law books lined the walls, but Teddy's father's papers covered the desk. Volumes of testimony, police reports, lab tests, DNA results. Teddy admired his father for the amount of knowledge he needed just to do his work. Lawyers had to be proficient in psychology, biology, and chemistry—but mainly in the law itself: evidence, criminal procedure, domestic relations, contracts, torts . . .

  Teddy used to think he wanted to be a lawyer, just like his father and grandfather. But he hated the things he heard people say: that lawyers were in it for the money, that his father was raking in bucks to defend Gregory Merrill.

  None of these things were new: Teddy had been hearing them for a long time. His father would always warn him that criminal cases drew emotional responses, and that Teddy shouldn't engage with people who lashed out about it. Their family had weathered obscene phone calls, hate mail, and most recently, a brick through the window.

  Silver Bay was a small town where everyone knew each other. It was the kind of New England town that made it onto calendars: fields of goldenrod, scarlet-tipped trees, white lighthouse on the headland. Teddy's father and grandfather had done legal work for so many families; yet now Teddy felt that friends had turned into enemies.

  It was bad enough that they attacked his father for his work. What made everything worse was the gossip about his parents' marriage. He had heard Mrs. Carroll whispering to her friend about his mother—that she had been having an affair. He couldn't stand to believe it, but somehow he knew it was true; he remembered how his mother had stayed out late a few nights before she died, how Teddy had been unable to sleep, waiting to hear her key in the door.

  Maybe that was the reason he felt so strange right now: Waiting made him feel worried. He remembered the night his mother hadn't come home.

  Teddy felt confused by life. He had a lot weighing on his mind—concern for his sister and the other girls in town, knowing he had to defend his parents. Something had happened yesterday, and he couldn't get it out of his mind.

  Getting a ride home from his coach, Teddy had seen Maggie walking along the side of the road.

  “Hey, there's my sister!” he'd called from the backseat, and the coach had pulled over to ask if she wanted a ride. Teddy would never forget that instant of terror—just a blink, before she saw her brother, before she recognized Mr. Jenkins. Maggie had thought, for just a second, that the killer was coming after her.

  Teddy could always handle the ignorant comments at school, even from guys like Bert and Gris, as in, “So—did your dad invite Greg Merrill to your house for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  What had cut him so badly yesterday were the thoughts expressed by his coaches. Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Phelan were nice guys. They weren't intellectual like his dad, but they were smart. They both had college degrees—Mr. Jenkins from UConn, Mr. Phelan from Notre Dame.

  Teddy loved playing soccer, and they were helping him to get really good at the sport. They worked his ass off at practice, drilling him up and down the field, forcing him to “get down and give me fifty.” Or sixty, or, today, a hundred push-ups. While Teddy's father was busy at the office, his coaches were working with him, praising him, telling him he could play for Yale-Harvard-Dartmouth, wherever he wanted.

  Mr. Phelan kept his car radio tuned to some call-in show, with a loud, friendly-sounding host who was always talking about what was wrong with the country. Mr. Phelan would listen, pitching in when the topics had to do with country-club prisons and guys released from jail to offend again.

  “It's the system,” Mr. Phelan said yesterday, not directly criticizing Teddy's father. “Cops are so concerned about criminals' rights, they aren't given the power they need to catch the bad guys—or make the convictions stick, or give out the sentences these people deserve.”

  “And God forbid you stick a killer on death row,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Some people think the killer has more right to live than the girls he kills!”

  Teddy had cringed at that; the coaches were too polite to say his father's name, but Teddy could feel them wanting to.

  “C'mon, Hunt.” Mr. Phelan had laughed. “Merrill's a moron. He was stupid, he got caught, he left the cops a roadmap to catch him—he definitely needs all the help he can get.”

  “Yeah, the guy's definitely not playing with a full deck. Insanity, diminished mental capacity, whatever: Give it to him.”

  Teddy hated the coaches for saying those things about his father—because Teddy had known what they were really talking about. It hurt to live in such a small town, and to be right in the middle of controversy.

  Maybe the worst part—and it hurt to admit it, even to himself—was that he was really angry with both his parents. His mother for whatever she'd been doing, his father for working all the time. Because, whether they meant to or not, they had made it so Teddy and Maggie were alone too much. They needed some adults around them, and the only ones Teddy could find were saying bad things about his dad.

  Teddy wished Kate were still here. She'd only gone to one of his games, but he'd had the feeling she would have liked to go to lots more. He had loved looking over at the sidelines, seeing her jump up and down and call his name. Maybe she didn't know, but he'd been able to hear her voice above all the others. And she understood him better than any other adult he knew.

  Brainer came padding over now, wanting to be petted. Teddy kneeled by the window, watching for his sister to come home from school. Stroking the dog's coat, Teddy realized that the mats and ticks were back. It had been almost a month since Kate had washed and brushed him.

  Teddy longed for a normal family. He didn't want it all to be so odd. Living with his retired grandfather and Maeve, having to hold up his father's honor to kids and coaches alike, being the only one at the door to greet his sister when she came home from school.

  And if she wasn't here in twenty seconds or less, Teddy would call Dad to tell him she wasn't home, and then Teddy would jump on his bike to start the search. He could see Amanda's newspaper picture, her arm sticking out of the breakwater.

  And just then, he heard Maggie's wheels on the driveway. Relief flooded through him in a huge rush. He couldn't believe how hard his heart was pounding as he heard the thump of her bicycle as it hit the ground. Her feet on the stairs, the click of the latch, and her breathless entrance. Teddy pictured Amanda in the breakwater again and couldn't stop the flood of tears scalding his eyes.

  “Teddy,” Maggie shouted, bursting in. “You're home before I am! If I'd known you didn't have practice today, I'd have taken the bus instead of riding my bike this morning!”

  Teddy slid his sleeve across his eyes, so she wouldn't see him crying. He watched her fly across the room, thrilled to see him.

  “Hey, Mags,” Teddy said, giving her a big grin, taking the knapsack of books from her arms, welcoming her home and not letting on how worried he'd been. “How's my best girl?”

  When Kate got home from seeing Andrew at eight-thirty Monday night, the phone was ringing. Bonnie was barking, and the town house was freezing cold—in her abstracted state these days, Kate had turned the heat off before leaving the house that morning. She placed Willa's painting on a kitchen chair and grabbed for the phone.

  “Hello?” she said, frowning, hand on the thermostat as she cranked it up to seventy.

  “Kate? It's John O'Rourke.”

  “Oh,” Kate said, gripping the receiver with both hands. Why was he calling? Hearing his voice made her feel warmer already. Back against the wall, she slid all the way down, till she was sitting on the floor,
Bonnie climbing right onto her lap. “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Are you calling to see whether I got the kids' letters? I did. And I've already started to write back to them . . . I miss them. No one like Maggie down here, and no one like Teddy, sweet enough to care that his dog has mats in his coat . . .”

  “Um, that's not why I'm calling,” John said.

  “Then . . . what?” she asked.

  The line was silent. All the pleasure and warmth suddenly drained out of her body, and Kate put her head down. There could only be one reason he'd be phoning her; she'd been foolish to think it was personal.

  “It's your client, right?” she asked, her heart stopping. “He's told you something?”

  “No, Kate. Something else. Did you see the papers?”

  “Yes—why?”

  “You don't know . . . it must not have made the Washington papers. Another body was found up here. In a breakwater.”

  “John,” she said, hands shaking.

  “It's not Willa,” he said.

  Her eyes flooded with tears. She stared at the painting her sister had done of her. The gentleness, the love came pouring out, as if Willa were in the room with her. “How do you know?” she heard herself ask.

  “Because the police identified her—Amanda Martin.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She's a young woman from Hawthorne. Her parents own a boatyard, and she worked there part-time. Nineteen, went to the UConn branch at Avery Point.”

  “Merrill,” Kate said. “He didn't get out, did he? Escape, or—”

  “No,” John said quickly. “He's still in Winterham, still on death row . . . It wasn't him.”

  “But the style, leaving her in a breakwater . . .”

  “Yes, it's very similar.”

  “What else do they know? Are there others?”

  “Not that anyone has found.”

  “My sister's still missing; what if it wasn't Merrill who found her, but someone else? This one . . .”

  “I'll keep close track of the case and stay in touch with you.”